


Hugging the Boards

by thistidalwave



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine Anderson has always felt overshadowed by his twin, Everett. When Cameron and Kurt Hummel wander into his life, he discovers that he has a lot more in common with his twin than he’d previously thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hugging the Boards

**Author's Note:**

> Written for halona at the [Blaine exchange](http://beyond-dapper.livejournal.com/132260.html). This fic took over my life. I _watched videos of hockey fights on YouTube._ I don’t even like hockey. I just live in Canada.

Blaine Anderson starts most school days by witnessing a bunch of football players toss a fashionable brunette boy that Blaine’s pretty sure he has art class with into the dumpster. Today is no exception. He tugs down the edge of his plain black T-shirt and keeps his head down as he walks into the school. He hurries down the hallway and turns the corner to get to his locker only to crash right into someone and only just catch himself before he falls on his ass. The person he crashed into isn’t so lucky.

“Sorry!” he blurts out.

“It’s all right,” the person says, getting to his feet and picking up a black notebook. “At least you didn’t do it on purpose.”

Blaine stares at the boy. “But... you were just—” He flails his arm in the general direction of outside, because he’s fairly sure he’s looking at the same boy he just saw getting thrown into the dumpster. Except... he’s wearing different clothes, maybe.

The boy frowns. “Kurt got thrown in the dumpster again, didn’t he?” He sighs. “Sorry, I’ll see you later.”

And he’s gone, leaving Blaine wondering how the _hell_ he didn’t know there was another set of twins attending McKinley.

\---

“Listen, Blaine,” Everett, his twin, says between first and second period, blocking the girl whose locker is next to Blaine’s by leaning on it and refusing to move. “You and I should go to the rink tonight and work on drills and stuff.”

Blaine pulls a textbook out of his locker and sighs. “Maybe.”

Everett smirks knowingly. “All right. I’m inviting Karofsky, too, mmkay?” He claps Blaine on the shoulder as he passes by, striding down the hallway before pausing to flirt with a group of Cheerios.

“Your brother’s a jerk,” the girl next to him mutters as she opens her locker.

\---

Blaine sees Karofsky slam Kurt into the lockers before last class. He knows it’s Kurt and not his twin because he vaguely remembers that his twin had been wearing grey, and Kurt’s wearing blue.

Blaine wonders why Kurt seems to be bullied so much.

\---

It turns out that Blaine had been half right when he’d thought that Kurt was in his art class. It’s not actually Kurt that sits down next to him, it’s his twin.

“Sorry for leaving without an explanation this morning,” he says. “I had to get Kurt a change of clothes from his locker. We’re twins, if you hadn’t cottoned on yet. I’m Cameron. You’re Everett, right?”

Blaine shakes his head. “No, I’m Blaine. Ev—”

“You’re twins, too! Weird, I’ve never seen you together or anything.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says, and then their teacher starts to talk about the mechanics of life drawing and they have to pay attention.

It’s not until they’ve been working on their assignment—sketching bodies with accurate proportions—for at least five minutes that Blaine works up the nerve to ask Cameron “Why does Kurt get bullied so much?”

Cameron draws a line too heavily and breaks his pencil lead. He looks at Blaine sadly. “He’s different.”

“Everyone’s different, though,” Blaine says.

“Not in the ways that apparently matter,” Cameron says bitterly, sharpening his pencil forcefully.

Blaine is genuinely curious. “Like what?”

“Like being gay,” Cameron says, but it’s so quiet Blaine’s barely sure he heard it.

\---

Blaine begrudgingly heads to the rec center after school.

Everett spends most of the time helping a disgruntled Karofsky improve his aim, which makes no sense to Blaine, because the last time he checked, Karofsky’s aim was actually pretty good. He skates suicides in silence, listening to the sound of metal scraping against ice and pucks hitting the backboards echo around the arena.

For some reason, he stays longer than Karofsky and Everett, just skating back and forth and letting his toes go numb. He’s thinking about what Cameron said about Kurt—that being gay was a difference that _mattered_ to other people.

Blaine had never really thought about it that way. Of course, that was merely because he avoided thinking about it at all—which sort of proved the point, didn’t it? The feelings he himself had toward other guys were the feelings he suppressed because he knew they mattered. Not just to other people, but to himself.

He slapshots a puck into the boards and cringes at the reverberating echo the sound makes.

\---

Dinner at the Anderson household is an awkward and long affair in which their father asks questions about their progress in school and their hockey practices and their social lives and Everett answers with long rambling answers while Blaine stares at his plate.

The second Blaine knows that Everett is going to allow the conversation to turn to a place where Blaine has to speak, he jumps up and starts clearing dishes away. He does all the dishes by himself while Everett and his father discuss the NHL and his mother occasionally attempts to contribute something.

His mother comes into the kitchen just as he’s putting the last frying pan in the dish rack to drain. She hugs him and kisses the top of his head. “Thanks, love,” she hums. Blaine pats her back awkwardly and inhales her perfume.

He’s lying on his bed staring at the ceiling and listening to music when Everett appears in the doorway and leans against the frame, arms crossed. “You know, you could tell them you’re gay. They wouldn’t care.”

“Exactly,” Blaine says, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. “They wouldn’t care, so why tell them.”

“That’s a stupid way to think about it,” Everett scoffs. “You’re not supposed to hide in the closet, from what I gather. You’re supposed to accept yourself or something.”

Blaine rolls onto his side and raises his eyebrows at Everett. “I have accepted myself. It’s the other people I’m worried about.”

Everett snorts. “You have not.”

“How would you know?”

“I just know. Big brother’s responsibility.”

“Never thought I’d see the day where you claimed to actually have responsibilities,” Blaine mutters.

“I have a lot of responsibilities,” Everett retorts. “Looking after you is just one of them.”

Blaine snorts. Everett rolls his eyes and walks away. Blaine hears his bedroom door slam shut a second later.

\---

Blaine is surprised when Cameron sits down next to him in art class the next day. He’d assumed it was a one day thing and they were going to go back to ignoring each other, but Cameron greets him with a smile.

“You’re in a good mood,” Blaine observes before he can stop himself.

“And you’re in a bad one,” Cameron shoots back.

Before Blaine can ask how the hell Cameron knows that (because seriously, the only person he expects that sort of thing from is Everett), their teacher starts talking and he busies himself with doodling in the margins of his notebook and thinking about coming out.

Coming out is pretty much what he’s been thinking about all day. He has to admit that Everett’s line about accepting himself and not hiding himself away was a really good point. Then he thinks about the school in general’s treatment of Kurt (which he had seen more of today—Kurt had been thrown in the dumpster and body checked into his locker at least twice that Blaine had seen) and how Cameron said it was because he was gay, and Blaine wants to hide in his bed for the rest of his life.

“Be my partner?” Cameron asks, breaking Blaine out of his thoughts. Blaine blinks at him in confusion.

“What?”

“We’re partnering up to draw each other. Be my partner?” Cameron repeats.

“Oh. Sure.”

Cameron grins and claps his hands together a bit, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Fantastic.” He shoves a pink handout at Blaine, who takes it apprehensively and looks at it. There are a _lot_ of bullet points of different things they’re supposed to draw. _Action shot... body part of your choosing... portrait..._

“Is this supposed to take the rest of the semester or something?” Blaine asks.

Cameron looks up from scribbling things down on his handout. “Yeah, that’s what she said. We’re not going to get a lot of class time though.”

“Huh,” Blaine says. Cameron hums back, his pen scratching into the paper hurriedly.

\---

There isn’t any hockey practice and Everett hasn’t managed to rope Blaine into going to the rink to run extra drills, so somehow Blaine finds himself sitting in the bleachers next to the football field with Cameron.

“I can’t believe Kurt plays football,” Blaine mutters for what must be the billionth time. And he really can’t. Why would the football team throw one of their players into the dumpster daily? It doesn’t make any sense.

Cameron rolls his eyes. “Yes, well, he’s going through a phase. Next week he’ll be on the Cheerios, I’ll bet.”

Blaine hums in response to that and tunes Cameron out in favour of watching his twin stand on the side of the football field, filing his nails and looking bored. There’s just something about the way Kurt studies his fingers so carefully... or maybe just the way he shifts his weight back and forth every so often, making his ass sway just so...

“—maybe my penis, how about that, or are you just going to stare at my brother until your brains fall out of your ears.”

“What?” Blaine snaps his focus over to Cameron, who snorts, rolling his eyes.

“You know, we do look _exactly the same._ You’d think you could focus on me while I’m talking,” Cameron says teasingly.

“But your clothes—what did you say about your penis again?”

“I’m making these notes for you and I was asking what body part of mine you wanted to get all up close and personal with to draw.”

Blaine’s eyes widen. “Uh, not your dick, that’s okay.”

Cameron raises a sole eyebrow and looks down at the paper and then back up. “Funny,” he says slowly. “I thought that would be something you’re into.”

Blaine can feel his cheeks turning red. All his instincts shout for him to just laugh it off and say that he doesn’t swing that way. Instead, he musters all the courage he can and scuffs the edge of his sneaker on the bench in front of him, mumbling, “Yeah, I am,” to the cement under the bleachers. He coughs a bit, looking away from Cameron, then back at him. “I just don’t think the teacher will really appreciate it the same way.”

“No, I’ve always had my doubts about her,” Cameron says smoothly. “So?”

“So what?” Blaine wipes his clammy palms on the thighs of his jeans. He has no idea if Cameron actually heard his confession or not, but he’s certainly acting like he didn’t. Blaine isn’t sure whether he’s relieved or annoyed by this.

“So which body part _do_ you want to draw?”

“Your hands. Hand. Whichever,” Blaine says without thinking. Cameron doesn’t comment, just goes back to writing on Blaine’s handout. Blaine looks back to the field, where Kurt is now tossing a football back and forth between his hands and talking to Coach Tanaka. Kurt looks annoyed, which only escalates when Tanaka says something and points fiercely to the middle of the field. Kurt visibly huffs and stalks over to where Tanaka had been pointing, handing off the football to the quarterback and lining up to kick.

“You should come over,” Cameron says suddenly.

Blaine looks at him, furrowing his eyebrows. “Now?”

“Well, no. But sometime soon. To work on this. Or just hang out, that would be cool, too. I could introduce you to Kurt. He’d probably like you,” Cameron rambles.

“Okay,” Blaine responds. “Sure. I’ve got hockey practice tomorrow, but how’s Friday for you?”

“Good. Friday’s good.”

Blaine nods and looks back at the field just in time to see the football Kurt kicked fly straight between the uprights.

\---

Blaine yanks off his helmet and drops it unceremoniously next to his hockey bag along with his hockey stick, grabbing a towel to wipe the sweat off his forehead as he sits down on the bench. He starts unlacing his skates as the rest of the hockey team trails through the door into the dressing room.

Everett plops down next to him and leans over to whisper in his ear. “Weak performance out there, sport.”

Blaine barely spares a glare for him. The Anderson twins may be physically identical, but unfortunately for Blaine, Everett has a natural born ‘hockey sense’, whereas Blaine... doesn’t. He’s not _bad_ at hockey, he’s just not the exceptional player that Everett is, and Everett will never let him forget it.

Sometimes Blaine wonders why he doesn’t just quit. Then he remembers the exhilarating feeling he gets when he steps out onto the ice, the way anticipation builds just before the puck drops, the feeling of teamwork after a good play—and he remembers.

Being the good little team captain he is, Everett has stood up again and is saying something to Karofsky, who is sitting on Blaine’s opposite side. Blaine resolutely ignores whatever it is, instead focusing on wiping all the snow and water off the blades of his skates. They need sharpening, he notes.

By the time Blaine is done showering and putting his street clothes on, the dressing room has mostly cleared out. The only person left, in fact, is Karofsky, sitting on a bench and lacing up his sneaker. He looks up when Blaine opens the door to leave.

“How do you stand having him for a brother?” Karofsky asks.

Blaine stands there, frozen, for a moment before he shrugs. “I just do.”

He abandons the dressing room and books it for the lobby of the rec center before Karofsky can say anything else.

\---

Friday afternoon finds Blaine sitting on a white couch in a white basement, feeling awkward while Cameron sits on the other end of the couch drawing.

Blaine is supposed to be drawing, too, but he doesn’t really like drawing in the first place, and he is a bit distracted by his surroundings.

“Did you decorate or—”

“Kurt did most of it,” Cameron says, not looking up from his sketchpad. “I helped, though—he needed an ‘artist’s eye’, apparently.”

“And you’re an artist,” Blaine states. If he’d previously had suspicions, they are now confirmed—there is a corner of the room set up with a canvas on a desk, surrounded by various pieces of art. Impressive art. Blaine is only taking art because it fills in his timetable, but Cameron is obviously taking it because he wants to.

“I suppose so.” Cameron looks up at the clock. “Kurt and my dad should be home soon.”

Just then the house shakes with the force of someone slamming the front door shut and Blaine can hear heavy footsteps coming down the stairs.

“Cam, I swear, if another jock so much as—oh, hello.” Kurt stops at the bottom of the steps and looks at Blaine. “I didn’t know you’d still be here.”

Cameron finishes off a line and stands up, sketchpad still hanging from his fingers. “Kurt, this is Blaine Anderson. Blaine, Kurt.”

Blaine’s first instinct is to shake Kurt’s hand, but Kurt is too far away for that, so he just waves his fingers awkwardly. Kurt nods back and looks at Cameron. “Are we making supper?”

“I am,” Cameron answers. “You can go shower or whatever.”

“I don’t really need to shower,” Kurt says. “I’ve got Tanaka wrapped around my pinky finger, so he mostly lets me sit on the sidelines.”

“Right,” Cameron says, already walking up the stairs. “Entertain Blaine, then.”

“I don’t need—I can just leave,” Blaine protests, but Cameron waves his hand at him and points to the couch in a clear indication of _‘sit down!’_

Blaine sits, though he isn’t quite sure why he doesn’t just insist he go home. He did drive himself and Cameron to the Hummel household after convincing Everett to go hang out with some of his hockey friends.

“Right,” Kurt says after Cameron is gone. “What were you guys doing? Cam said a school project?”

“Yeah, art class,” Blaine says, feeling awkward sitting while Kurt is still standing in the same spot. “We’re supposed to draw each other.”

“That makes this easy, then,” Kurt says, sounding relieved. He walks over to the couch and sits down, crossing his legs and looking at Blaine. “Draw away.”

Blaine blinks rapidly. “What?”

“Draw.” Kurt gestured to his face.

“I’m supposed to draw Cameron, though...”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “Seriously? What alternate universe is your head currently residing in? Identical twins. We look the same.”

“Sure, at first glance. But you’re not the same people.”

Kurt merely raises an eyebrow. “Just draw, Anderson.”

Blaine obeys, studiously sketching the profile of his face. He can’t get the nose right and eventually gives up, looking at Kurt. “So, football. Doesn’t seem like you,” he comments, unable to think of anything else to say.

“How would you know?”

Blaine shrugs. “They throw you in the dumpster. Team mates shouldn’t treat each other like that.”

“Yeah, you’d think,” Kurt mutters. “You play hockey, though? Or is that just your brother?”

“We both play,” Blaine says. “He’s better than I am.”

“Is he?” Kurt asks, an unreadable expression on his face.

Blaine swallows and nods, looking away from the pout of Kurt’s lips back to his paper. He finds himself shading a strand of hair in front of his drawing’s forehead. Cameron doesn’t have that strand of hair.

“That seems like a terrible way to look at it,” Kurt says quietly after a moment. “You shouldn’t judge yourself based on your brother.”

“I guess I just don’t look at anything the right way.” Blaine tries to smile but can tell it comes out looking stupid and fake.

Kurt frowns. “Cameron tells me I look at things wrong all the time. I was kind of just... channelling?”

Blaine snorts at that. “I’m not offended, don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t,” Kurt says, his tone bordering on harsh. “Are you drawing?”

“Uh, sort of. I’m not actually any good at art. Not like Cameron.”

“Yes, well, not many people are like Cameron,” Kurt says. “Can I see it?”

Blaine appraises his drawing—more like his jumble of lines on paper, he thinks wryly—for a moment before turning it around so Kurt can see.

“Looks like a jumble of lines on paper,” Kurt says, and Blaine feels his heart practically flip flop. “Although, Cam’s art usually looks like that to me, too, so maybe you’re doing it right.”

“Trust me, he’s got more talent in his toenail than I possess entirely.”

“Perhaps.” Kurt stands and brushes his palms down the sides of his skintight sweatpants. “Let’s go make sure he hasn’t gotten distracted by some pretty colours and burned supper.”

“Would he do that?” Blaine asks, following Kurt up the stairs.

“He almost did once,” Kurt says solemnly.

\---

Over the next few weeks, Blaine and Cameron develop a pattern. On days when Blaine doesn’t have hockey practice, Kurt has football, so Blaine drives Cameron home and stays until Kurt arrives. He usually manages to stay even longer and talk to Kurt about random things—they never really run out of topics, it seems. When Blaine does have hockey and Cameron isn’t busy with something else, Cameron will come to the rink for a bit and work on his action shot drawings.

Sometimes Kurt comes with Cameron, and on those days Blaine’s performance in practice is significantly worse. Surprisingly, Everett never says anything about it, instead choosing to look at Blaine knowingly. Sometimes Blaine thinks he sees a hint of pity hidden there as well, but it always passes so quickly that Blaine can pretend he never saw a thing.

The only thing amiss about their arrangement is the part where Blaine’s team mates, especially Karofsky, complain about ‘that pouf sitting and watching us play’. They all seem convinced that Cameron and Kurt are merely there in order to check out their asses, no matter how many times Blaine tries to explain.

“All I’m saying is, I already have to deal with one of them at football. I don’t need them checking me out at hockey practice, too.”

Blaine resists the urge to point out that no one would want to check their ugly asses out anyway.

“Yeah, if one of them is a fag, the other is too, right? Identical and all that.”

“Hardly,” Everett says nonchalantly, surprising Blaine, but no one seems to hear him.

“He’s just working on an art project,” Blaine contributes loudly, but no one seems to hear that, either.

\---

They’ve gone so long without anyone mistaking a twin for the other one that any concerns Blaine had about it are completely forgotten by the time it does happen.

Blaine isn’t quite sure how it happened, but on his way to third period on a Thursday he discovers Kurt being held up against a locker with Everett’s arm firmly planted across his chest, a group of jocks leering in the background.

Blaine immediately knows he should do something, but his feet seem to be stuck to the floor.

“Don’t come near me again, you little fag,” Everett is sneering in Kurt’s face. “I don’t want your homo germs infecting me.”

“I’m not gay,” Kurt spits out, and Blaine can almost feel all the hopes he’d been pretending he didn’t have crashing down around him as his feet suddenly regain the ability to move without his permission.

“Get off him, Ev,” he says in a surprisingly calm tone.

Everett looks at him. There’s so much malice in his eyes that Blaine hardly recognizes him. “Or what?”

Blaine pushes Everett away—which is notably easier than he’d thought it would be—positioning himself between his twin and Kurt. “Lay off,” he reiterates, voice close to shaking.

Everett takes a step back and glares at Blaine. “Are you gay, too, then?” he challenges, even though Blaine knows Everett is well aware that Blaine is gay, presumably through that _sense_ that he’s always seemed to have.

Blaine glares back. He almost says it—almost answers with a resounding yes and maybe a fuck you as well—but then his eyes stray to the people behind his brother, the letterman jackets and the Cheerio uniforms and the judging faces, and his resolve breaks.

“Get lost,” he says instead.

Everett smirks and steps backward, turning on his heel as he salutes Blaine with a finger. “Yessir,” he mocks, striding down the hallway.

Blaine lets out a deep breath and turns to look at Kurt. “Are you okay?”

Kurt nods. “Thanks.”

“How did that happen? I’ve never seen Everett attack anybody before.”

“I mistook him for you and asked if he wanted to go for pizza after practice tonight. He just flipped.”

Blaine closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kurt says, his voice oddly soft.

Blaine opens his eyes again, sighing. “I’ll see you later, okay?” he says, already walking away. “Pizza sounds good.”

The smile he catches on Kurt’s face seconds before Blaine turns away makes his heart feel too big for his chest.

\---

What surprises Blaine the most about hockey practice that night is that only one person is sitting in the bleachers. He’s working in a sketchbook, which probably sells him as Cameron to the rest of the team, if they even give a shit, which isn’t likely, but Blaine can tell by the lack of such fashion staples as tennis shoes or a T-shirt that it’s most definitely Kurt.

The last half hour of practice is scrimmage. Blaine and Everett are on opposing teams and Everett seems to take every opportunity possible to slam Blaine into the boards, the ice, other players—whatever. By the time Blaine showers and puts on his jeans and T-shirt, he’s positive he has bruises in places he’d really rather _not_.

He climbs up to the spot in the bleachers where Kurt is sitting, concentrating on whatever he’s doing. “What are you doing?” Blaine asks, peering over the edge of the sketchbook. Kurt jumps and hugs the sketchbook to his chest, hiding the drawing.

“I’m not supposed to let anyone see his unfinished work,” Kurt says all in a rush.

“Okay. That doesn’t tell me what you were doing, though.”

“Inking some lines. It’s the one thing I can be trusted with, apparently.” Kurt closes the sketchpad and tucks it into his messenger bag. “So, pizza?”

“I’m starving,” Blaine says by way of reply, already stepping his way off the bleachers. “Where’s Cameron?”

“He had to study for a math test, I guess.”

“One that you don’t have?” Blaine asks, pulling open the exit door and letting Kurt go through first.

“He takes a higher math. I’m... not so good with geometry.”

“Ah.” Blaine stops walking next to the space where his car should be. He sighs. “Looks like Everett took the car without consulting with me.”

Kurt bites the inside of his lip and shrugs. “I’ve got mine.” He gestures to the Lincoln Navigator in the next parking space. “Just throw your bag in the back. I can drive you home after.”

Blaine does throw his bag in the back with a sigh before settling into the passenger seat and buckling his seat belt.

The drive over to Pizza Hut is quiet save for the music Kurt has playing on the car stereo. By the time they’re sitting down at a table conveniently situated up against a wooden panelled wall and away from any windows with their pizza slices, Blaine is feeling increasingly awkward and a lot like he’s on a _date_. With a straight guy.

The whole romantic atmosphere of this particular table isn’t really helping.

In an effort to distract himself from trying to guesstimate the length of Kurt’s eyelashes, Blaine says the first thing that comes to mind. “I’m still really sorry for what Everett did today.”

Kurt swallows and looks at Blaine, eyes wide. “It’s okay, really. I’ve had worse.”

That’s enough to make Blaine’s free hand clench into a fist. “You shouldn’t have. And it’s different, with it being _Everett_. I mean, you’d think he’d understand somewhat. I don’t know what he was going on about with the whole homo germs thing because he’s kind of _related_ to me and we live in the same house, so—”

“Wait, what?” Kurt interrupts.

Blaine abruptly realizes that he’s said too much. Figuring he’s already walked to the ledge and he may as well jump off, he mutters, “I’m kind of gay, so he shouldn’t be worried about you.”

Kurt doesn’t say anything for so long that Blaine almost contemplates getting up and leaving, but he can’t bring himself to actually leave Kurt alone in Pizza Hut. Also, he realizes, Kurt drove, so that would be a bit useless.

When Kurt finally does say something, it’s “Are you out to anybody else?”

“Everett. And I told Cameron, but I’m not sure if he heard,” Blaine says to the top of the table. His pizza is probably cold by now, but he doesn’t really want to eat it anyway.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Kurt says, a laugh behind his words. Blaine looks up to see possibly the cutest smile in existence on Kurt’s face.

“That’s what I was saying,” Blaine says. And suddenly it doesn’t seem as awkward, because Kurt is talking about anything and everything, mostly to do with Vogue, Blaine thinks.

He’s only half paying attention. The other half is devoted to figuring out how a guy as stereotypically gay as Kurt... isn’t. He cares about fashion, he cares about theatre—he’s so gay that even Blaine had thought so, and Blaine was pretty oblivious to most things.

And Blaine was aware that there were metrosexuals in the world, but did Kurt have to be one?

So maybe Blaine just wants Kurt for himself.

He can’t really help it.

“Blaine?”

“Hm?”

“I asked if you were going to the football game tomorrow.”

“Oh. I didn’t really have plans to...” Kurt’s face drops and Blaine quickly backtracks. “I will, though. To see you play.”

Kurt grins. “Thanks. Your support will be much appreciated.”

“No problem,” Blaine says, and Kurt goes back to musing over if saffron yellow and fuchsia should ever really go together.

\---

When Blaine gets home from pizza with Kurt, there’s still a soft yellow light shining around the sides of Everett’s barely cracked open bedroom door. Without really thinking about it, he pushes the door open the rest of the way.

Everett is lying on top of his covers, iPod resting on his stomach with one earphone trailing up to his ear and the other hanging off to the side. His eyes are closed.

Blaine maneuvers his way around the desk chair and over to the bed. He’s reaching out to shut off the lamp on the bedside table when Everett grabs his arm. Blaine freezes, looking down at his twin warily, but Everett just gazes back, blinking slowly.

Everett lets his fingers fall away from Blaine’s arm. “Do you know how I knew you were gay?” he asks, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Blaine frowns. “No.”

“I didn’t.”

“But—”

“I wanted you to be so that I wouldn’t feel like I was the only one that felt like this.”

Blaine stares at Everett, speechless.

“But then once you confirmed it without even blinking I thought maybe I could just blame it all on you. Say that it was your fault I have these _feelings_.”

“It’s not,” Blaine says weakly. “That’s a stupid way to look at it.”

“Yeah. It’s stupid,” Everett mumbles. He rolls over onto his stomach, iPod already tossed to the floor. “Go to bed, Blaine.”

Blaine flips off the lamp. “‘Night, Everett,” he whispers into the dark. His only response is barely audible breathing.

\---

Dinner at the Anderson household is going just as swimmingly as it does on a daily basis. Blaine has already asked for permission to go to the football game after washing up and been told it’s fine, so he’s concentrating on finishing his food and ignoring the conversation.

That is, until there’s a lull in the conversation and Everett says, “I have something to tell you.”

“Go ahead,” their father says, putting a bite of steak into his mouth and chewing.

Everett takes a deep breath and puts down his cutlery. “I’m gay.”

Blaine drops his fork to his plate with a clatter and grabs at his water, gulping it down in an attempt to _not_ choke on his food.

“That’s nice, honey,” their mother says charmingly, smiling at Everett and patting his hand across the table.

“Thank you for telling us, son,” their father says once he’s done chewing. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t look particularly put out, either.

Blaine’s mother turns to him. “What about you, Blaine?”

Everett jabs Blaine in the ribs with his elbow, digging right into one of the bruises from practice the day before. Blaine puts down his water glass with a shaky hand and smiles weakly at his mother.

“Yeah, me too,” he says, mostly because he’s afraid of what Everett will do if he says anything else. He thinks he sees a glimpse of disappointment in his father’s eyes, but it’s replaced with passiveness so quickly that Blaine pretends it was just surprise. “I’m going to start washing up. I’ll be late for the game.”

“All right,” his mother says, smiling at him. Just like every other day.

He piles up the dirty dishes and carries them to the kitchen. Just before he lets the door swing shut behind him, he thinks he sees Everett looking after him with something of a sad expression on his face.

Not much like every day.

\---

By the time the second half of the game starts, the Titans are down a few points and Blaine has ditched his spot sitting in the bleachers because the guys behind him kept going on and on about how Hummel shouldn’t be allowed to play even though he hadn’t done anything but sit on the bench for the entire game.

It’s lucky that Blaine likes football well enough to understand at least a little bit of what’s going on, he thinks, or else he’d be in for a boring time.

Not that staring at the back of Kurt’s head for an extended period of time is all that unenjoyable.

Blaine watches the rest of the game leaned against the frame at the bottom of the bleachers. McKinley actually manages to catch up to the opposing team, mostly thanks to a few well-made touchdowns by number twenty.

The game is tied, and McKinley is on offense with only time for one play left. To Blaine’s surprise, Kurt actually stands up and puts on his helmet at Tanaka’s orders. The crowd is silent, so Blaine resists the urge to cheer as Kurt jogs out to the center of the field and lines himself up with the ball that number eleven is holding for him.

And then Kurt kicks it and it goes exactly where it’s supposed to just as the clock runs out and then Blaine is cheering, but that’s okay, because so is everyone else there to support the Titans.

Blaine sticks around while everyone else starts filing out of the bleachers, waiting to talk to Kurt after he gets out of the locker room or before he gets to the locker room, Blaine isn’t picky.

As it turns out, Kurt finds Blaine before he goes to the locker room. He appears, a bit like magic, in front of Blaine and grabs his arm, dragging him into the shadows underneath the bleachers.

“Whoa, what’s going on?” Blaine asks. Kurt just shrugs and smiles at him. “That was a really awesome kick, by the way.”

“So they keep telling me,” Kurt says softly. Suddenly Blaine is acutely aware that Kurt is standing really close to him and they’re positioned in such a way that no one can see them. “It didn’t really feel like me, though.”

“No?” Blaine asks, trying to keep his breathing under control even though his lungs are attempting to compensate for the accelerated rate his heart is beating at. “Why not?”

Blaine more feels Kurt’s shrug than sees it. “My dad likes football,” Kurt says, and Blaine can’t make sense of it.

“Yeah?” he stammers out.

“Yeah,” Kurt breathes, nodding a bit, and somehow that movement brings his face closer to Blaine’s and his lips against Blaine’s and _holy shit Blaine is kissing Kurt_ and it’s amazing and he thinks there should be confetti or something because something as awesome as this should come with fanfare.

Kurt pulls away and grins that silly little grin and Blaine thinks he might have giggled a bit himself.

“I better go find Cam and my dad,” Kurt says. “Thanks for coming, Blaine.”

Blaine nods because he still can’t figure out how his vocal cords work. Kurt’s barely taken two steps away before Blaine misses him. He barely thinks it before Kurt’s hands are rested on his face and his lips are pressed against his again. Blaine leans into the kiss as he tries to hold onto the sides of Kurt’s football jersey, but his fingers slip off the fabric and Kurt is two steps away again.

“See you tomorrow, Blaine,” Kurt says breathlessly, waving his fingers before turning away.

Blaine waves back and doesn’t realize until Kurt’s been gone for a good minute that tomorrow is Saturday and he never sees Kurt on the weekend.

\---

Blaine doesn’t, in fact, see Kurt tomorrow, which he chalks up to forgetfulness on Kurt’s part. Instead he spends the weekend avoiding Everett, who is in an angry mood, and daydreaming about kissing Kurt some more and doesn’t see either Kurt or Cameron until Cameron shows up for art class and forces Blaine out of his seat near the front of the room and into one in the back corner.

“How did you get Kurt to come out?” Cameron whispers.

Blaine frowns at him. “What are you talking about?”

“After the football game on Friday he actually told me and our father straight out that he’s gay. I’ve been trying to get him to admit it for months, years, maybe. How did you manage it?”

“I don’t know,” Blaine mutters. “I kind of thought... well, he said he wasn’t gay.” And then he’d kissed Blaine, but Blaine had been mostly thinking about the kissing and ignoring the previous metrosexual freakout he’d been having just for the sake of his sanity.

“He told you that?” Cameron asks, looking a bit panicked.

“Well, no, he told a bunch of jocks that.”

“Oh,” Cameron says in relief. “Well, of course he’d tell a bunch of homophobic jerkoffs that he’s not gay.”

Blaine feels stupid. “Right.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Cameron prods.

“I said I didn’t know.”

“Come on, you’ve got to know something. Kurt didn’t go nowhere right after the football game.”

Blaine sighs and looks down at the top of the table. “I told him I was gay. And he kissed me.”

The sound Cameron lets out is nearly a shriek as he claps his hands together. “I knew it.”

“Is there something you’d like to share with the class, Mr. Hummel?” the art teacher asks, raising an eyebrow in their direction. The entire class turns to look at them.

“No, no, sorry to interrupt,” Cameron says gleefully.

The teacher eyes Cameron, but continues with whatever she was saying before. Blaine sinks down in his chair and tries to ignore the grin on Cameron’s face.

\---

“Got your project handed in?” Kurt asks Blaine at his locker on Friday after school. “God knows you spent enough time working on it this week.”

Blaine snorts. “I think I spent more time with you than with my sketchbook.”

“I was helping! You needed to know exactly what to draw and I look the same,” Kurt protests.

“I think it’s lucky I even finished it,” Blaine teases.

“Yes, well.” Kurt rolls his eyes as Blaine shuts his locker and they start walking down the hall toward the exit. “What are your plans for the weekend?”

“Noth—oh, I have a hockey game tomorrow,” Blaine recalls. He looks at Kurt calculatingly. “Do you want to come?”

“To your hockey game?” Kurt asks skeptically.

“Yeah. Boyfriends support each other in athletic endeavours, don’t they?”

Kurt stops walking for a moment before double timing to catch up with Blaine again. “Is that what we are?”

“Boyfriends? I thought so,” Blaine says, worried that Kurt disagrees and he was just deluding himself.

Kurt merely grins, though. “Well, Anderson, your boyfriend will be at your hockey game. Text me, okay?”

“Okay,” Blaine agrees, and Kurt leans over to just barely kiss him before heading in the opposite direction of where Blaine parked that morning.

\---

“I hear Hummel’s turned you into a fag, Anderson,” Karofsky says just as Blaine is shoving his right foot into his hockey skate. He slams his foot into the ground extra hard and starts tying the skate as calmly as possible.

“Kurt didn’t turn me gay, Karofsky,” he says to his skate. “I was already gay before we started dating.”

“Sure didn’t seem like it,” Karofsky sneers. “Does that mean you’ve been hitting on us all this time and you’re only just now coming clean about it?”

Blaine pulls his double knot tight and stands up, levelling his gaze at Karofsky. “I wouldn’t hit on you if I was paid, no need to worry.”

Rage bubbles up in Karofsky’s eyes and suddenly Blaine finds himself pinned to the wall in a manner that would probably hurt a lot more if he wasn’t wearing his hockey equipment. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re lying?” Karofsky hisses in Blaine’s ear.

“All right, save it for the other team, Karofsky,” Everett interrupts, pulling him away from Blaine. “Out on the ice, boys,” he announces to the team at large, giving Blaine a look that he can’t decipher when he walks past.

\---

Blaine spots Kurt in the bleachers, wearing a fashionable winter coat and hugging a Styrofoam cup that Blaine assumes is hot chocolate close to his chest. He waves from the bench and Kurt waves back, grinning.

Blaine looks away for a moment, and when he looks back, Kurt is blowing him a kiss. He pretends to catch it and blow it back and the grin on Kurt’s face gets even bigger, which Blaine hadn’t really thought possible.

\---

With twenty seconds left to go in the third period, Blaine and Everett slam into each when they both go for the puck at the same time. A member of the opposing team actually manages to snag it and pass it down the ice, but Everett grabs onto Blaine’s shoulders and shoves him backwards. Blaine grabs onto Everett to keep his balance and ends up pushing back.

Everett manages to get his arm up around Blaine’s neck and starts pushing him down. Blaine can hear the crowd yelling something about a fight and struggles his way back up, somehow losing his helmet in the process and grabbing Everett’s jersey for leverage just as Everett lands a solid punch to the side of Blaine’s head and keeps landing them. Blaine’s arms are stuck beneath Everett’s and it takes considerable effort to yank one out and attempt to hit Everett back.

“What happened to saving it for the other team?” he yells. Everett doesn’t respond, but he stops trying to punch Blaine’s head even as their grip on each other doesn’t lessen. The referee had skated over sometime previously and now pushes his way in between them, breaking their hold.

They both get sent off the ice and into the dressing room with demeaning glares from their coach, who also checks them over and sends for ice packs, which the assistant coach brings in what Blaine thinks might be record time, but really his head hurts too much for him to be sure how long it actually was.

“I hate you so much,” Everett says scathingly under his breath when they’re finally alone in the dressing room. He’s already taken off his hockey uniform and put on jeans and a T-shirt, but Blaine is pretty sure he’d skipped showering. Blaine chooses to ignore his words.

“You know what I don’t understand?” Blaine asks Everett from his place sitting on the bench, holding his ice pack over his eye.

“What?” Everett says, grabbing his helmet out from where he’d dropped it and putting it in his bag.

“Why you came out to our parents. Actually, I don’t understand much of anything you did. You told me I had to accept myself, but then you lashed out at Kurt and said you didn’t want him to spread his homo germs? You don’t make sense.”

Everett zips his bag shut and slings it over his shoulder. “Thing is, little brother, that you might have everything figured out, but not all of us do.”

“What makes you think I have everything figured out?”

Everett snorts. “Come on, Blaine. You’re gay, you get yourself a boyfriend, you don’t blink an eye when Karofsky tries to tear you a new one...”

“So?”

“So maybe I want to be like that.”

“So try.”

“You think I don’t try? I try to be like you all the time. I try to have all this courage and I come out so that it’s easier for you because that seems like a nice thing to do and I give you advice because I feel like I should. But really I think I need someone telling _me_ what to do, because I haven’t got a fucking clue. Why is it always you? I just want it to be me for once.”

Blaine sighs and pats the bench next to him. “Sit down.” Everett does, though he doesn’t look happy to be doing it. “It’s not always me. You got all the hockey sense I didn’t and you know it.”

“Who cares? So I’m good at hockey. Where’s that going to get me in life? The NHL? As if.”

Blaine punches Everett gently in the shoulder. “Don’t be like that. It could, you never know.”

Everett smiles a little but doesn’t say anything for a minute. Blaine is flipping his ice pack over when he finally does say something. “Is Cameron gay?”

Blaine fumbles the ice pack and drops it to the floor. “Uh, not that’s he’s told me, why?” Blaine studies Everett’s face even as Everett tries to hide it by turning away. “You like him, don’t you,” Blaine realizes.

“Yeah, well, looks like that’s just something else I’m missing out on.”

“Hey, maybe if you stopped acting like a homophobe and an asshole in general, he could be persuaded.”

“Maybe,” Everett mumbles.

“All you have to do is try,” Blaine says.

Everett looks at Blaine and nods almost to himself. “I suppose I can do that.”

“That’s all I ask. Also that you try to refrain from bashing my brains out in future.”

Everett looks at Blaine, smirking, and they both burst into laughter.


End file.
